Obamacare has been, to put it mildly, burdensome for small businesses in New Jersey. Soon, the Senate will have a chance to do something about it.

Year after year, when the National Federation of Independent Business surveys its members, they say their number one priority is healthcare, but the Affordable Care Act, better known as Obamacare, has made things more difficult for them. Its onerous taxes and mandates have increased costs and reduced choices.

Editor’s note: This article is the second in an exclusive series of Muriel’s inspiring and hopeful message after dealing with breast cancer

It was Nov. 25, two days after my 79th birthday, when Dr. Ann Hughes, the interpreting radiologist for the Star and Barry Tobias Women’s Health Center at Central State Medical Center, wrote to let me know my mammogram showed a finding “that requires additional imaging studies.” The radiologist sent the same information to Dr. Robert Pedowitz, my general practitioner, who immediately called me. He wanted me to see Dr. Mary Martucci, the medical director and surgical oncologist at the Women’s Center. I’m not saying it’s cancer, he cautioned, simply that he would like an oncologist involved right from the get go. Just in case.

Assemblyman Declan O’Scanlon (R-Monmouth) called out his colleague, Assemblywoman Eliana Pintor Marin (D- Newark) for continuing to perpetrate the myth that New Jersey short changes funding for women’s healthcare.

“I count at least seven line items where we put money to women’s healthcare, including $135 million for family health services to provide prenatal and perinatal care for expectant mothers and their children,” said O’Scanlon. “The results of the Republican investment in women’s healthcare speak for themselves. New Jersey is in the top five States with the lowest STD rates in the country. Other states look to New Jersey as a model for STD prevention.” O’Scanlon also pointed out that the Democrats have failed to provide any additional funding for Family Planning Services in the Fiscal Year 2016 budget they passed last June.”

New Jersey residents are more than four times as likely as the national average to have difficulty finding a doctor who accepts their health insurance, according to a new Rutgers University report. Of state residents between the ages of 18 and 64, 14…

But all is not lost! HealthCare.gov doesn’t work, so one of the firms contracted by the federal government to help with the enrollment process has opened centers in Edison and Wayne that are open seven days per week where trained navigators will be on hand to help the uninsured and soon to be uninsured enroll.

The deadline to enroll in ObamaCare, if you want coverage by January 1, is December 23. Get your elf off the shelf and hustle off to Edison or Wayne. There are malls nearby.